Our industry celebrates diversity – but demands consistent quality.

SPOTLIGHT
Just a year ago the economic world was teetering on the brink. Banks were collapsing, people went
in fear of losing their savings and financial execs were calling for government support. Yet at the same
time demand for congresses, meetings and training events held broadly stable.
Martin Sirk takes an upbeat
view of the future.
Sirk is CEO of the International
Congress and
Convention Association (IC-
CA), and in November the
global community for the
meetings industry had just
chalked up a record result in
Florence. With 847 delegates
from 66 countries, attendance
at the annual congress
in Italy was the highest
ever. “Despite the fal-
lout from the recession,”
Sirk summarises, “in an extremely
difficult economic
environment only a few big
events were cancelled. And
only very few associations
had to contend with marginal
declines in membership
or budget cuts.”
In Taiwan Sin Chen, project
manager of Meet Taiwan,
has calculated double-digit
growth for the business
travel segment in 2009, sus-
Industry trend
Meetings in the aftermath
of financial excess
tained chiefly by the markets
in China and the UK.
And advance bookings for
the coming year are highly
satisfactory, he adds.
Rob Davidson, a lecturer in
Business Travel and Tourism
at the University of Westminster,
sees the situation
similarly. “2010 is the beginning
of the economic upswing,”
Davidson predicted
early in December during
the EIBTM in Barcelona. Al-
though the trend towards
booking corporate meetings
at short notice and hunting
around for price discounts
will persist and western
economies are still recuperating,
the emerging markets
are already very dynamic.
Most importantly, in the industry
expert’s estimation
“association business
worldwide is still completely
stable”.
Internationally, the industry
16 1/2010